BloodRayne (2005)

What is it with Uwe Boll and video games? This bloke alone must have a thing for decimating one series of video games after another with his crude movies, even if they bomb in the cinemas. I am talking about this abomination, BloodRayne. As if he hasn't done enough to House Of The Dead and Alone In The Dark video game series with his movies, he damages the reputation of this video game series. It's an arduous task to review every detail of this movie as I have neither played the game, nor have I researched it online. But watching this movie has proven to be a real headache.

So let's see, we have Kristianna Loken playing the lead role Rayne (she had a much pleasant role in Terminator 3), Michelle Rodriguez as Katarin (she too was better off in Resident Evil), Michael Madsen as Vladamir, Matt Davis as Sebastian, and Ben Kingsley (he was better off in Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time) as the overlord Kagan, to mention but a few. Something always bothered me as to why these people were brought together into this movie; I mean they share no chemistry with each other and, they are possible misfits with little or no development throughout the course of this flick. Listening to their dry dialogue and watching them perform on screen was pretty much torture.

So what does it mean to be a vampire? Well a vampire is weak against silver, garlic, crosses and holy and sunlight. A dhamphir, on the other hand, bears all the strengths of a vampire, but none of its weaknesses. But BloodRayne is a sham: she is weak against water, holy or not, and shows little strength. If I were to compare her with Blade, she would certainly be a deviation from her video game character.

Remember the infamous sex scene from Alone In The Dark where Carnby makes out with Cedrac? Well it looks like the same idea is recycled into this movie where Rayne makes out with Sebastian for no apparent reason whatsoever. Why? Why? Why?

 

Now the visual effects in flashbacks, who could imagine that those cloudy screens and translucence were proper? I mean there are moments where images looked as though they were either vibrating, or were immersed in water and distorted as a result. On top of that, these flashbacks were too frequent and out of rhythm.

 

Lastly is the level of violence. As if it had to be more violent and gorier than it was in the previous film, Alone In The Dark, accompanying several fight scenes which most viewers would describe as sub par or, in my own words, videogame-esque--lifeless and without momentum. I guess Boll was so cheap that he could not be bothered to hire a professional choreographer to train the actors for fight scenes. (Watch out also for animal abuse at a carnival at the beginning.)

 

So any mention of Uwe Boll attached to any movie would spell a catastrophe in the box office. Watching this movie was like having my nails peeled off with a penknife whilst strapped to a chair. I wouldn't want anyone to watch this flick and lose 92 minutes of their life.